Bless the Weather
by abstraction
Summary: Time has never been a straight line for Rose Tyler. It should have figured that dimensions wouldn't be either. Pre- and Post-Series 4, all at the same time.


**B****less the Weather**  
abstraction

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The sky is dark, a sweeping charcoal brushing the heavy bottoms of the clouds, sinking ever slowly toward the horizon. She has been watching the storm gather, white swelling into gray, a swirling mix of heat and the damp caress of humid summer air, like ink in milk. The field below is dry and crackling, shadowed by the impending sound of lightning, and even as she shifts uncomfortably with impatience, she can hear the grass crunching against the whisper of a breeze further down from where she's standing. She breathes in deeply, calmly, tasting the changing pressure, feeling fine strands of her hair rising with static. When she lets the air out, her hot breath is cooler than the stifling compressed atmosphere she's been growing accustomed to. Her fingers twitch every now and then, in time with an invisible electric current, the ancient beat of it singing through her pores.

The hill housing her silhouette begins to pulse, glowing impossibly every few seconds, the pale grass illuminating so fiercely it looks like fire.

It's starting.

She can feel the dull sting of electricity twisting around her, the dry zap of it charging in the spaces between her bones, and her joints creak with reluctance. Her eyes close, eyelashes stiff and unwilling, and her mouth purses, chaps. She grazes her teeth against her bottom lip and it feels rough, papery. She tries to swallow, fails, and the pulsing grows stronger. In another moment, she knows what she will have to go through, what she will have to endure, but for now she silently counts backward from ten.

If she says anything, it's lost in the blinding flash of white and the deafening crack that occurs when she gets to zero. The ground convulses, an aftershock of sorts, and then the heavens fall to the ground with a thundering intensity, as if the earth had been holding its breath and could not do so any longer. The rain cools and soothes the dried soil, and sound rumbles from the sky in a constant growl, but there's never any more light.

The girl on the hill has disappeared.

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Her straining grip is, at best, doomed. The ache in her fingers swells and burns more every second, fingernails scrabbling for purchase, and there is hair in her mouth, the sun in her eyes. Dirt loosens under her hands, spills over the edge of the cliff, falling unceremoniously into her face, obscuring her vision and flooding her senses with the overwhelming scent of soil. She kicks out with her feet, her legs swinging toward the rock she so desperately clings to, searching for friction, but it is too smooth. She contemplates the fall, how the air will rush upwards around and against her body, pull at her clothes and her hair, how there will be silence save for the whistling crush of wind against her eardrums. She wonders, maybe a little hysterically, if the ground will turn to rubber and bounce her back up.

"Hel_lo_, what's this?" says a voice from somewhere far above her head. "Got yourself into a spot of trouble?"

Hands grip her forearms firmly and begin to pull her up. "Hoo," the man huffs, "up we go!"

Slowly she shifts and more dirt falls into her face but she doesn't care, doesn't feel anything but relief as her body scrapes against the rock. There is a terrifying moment where the man pauses and she thinks that he will release her, or fall over, but he only sighs a little in effort before continuing to pull her up. As soon as her ribs hit the edge she thinks she's going to be okay. It's a small struggle, but finally she finds herself on solid ground, her face to the sky and the earth pressing reassuringly against her back. She pushes her hair out of her eyes, and sighs.

A face eclipses the sun from her sight and the grin that lights it is almost a little annoying.

"Took you bloody long enough," she says conversationally.

"Yes, well, you know how it goes. One small word and suddenly you've insulted their whole galaxy. I admit it wasn't in the best of taste, but they were going to drop you! From the cargo hold!"

"Yes, I was actually quite aware of that, thank you."

"Sorry," he says, his breath falling across her face. "Sorry," he says softly against her jaw. His lips brush across her cheek, and she tries to look unaffected. "Sorry," he whispers to her lips, the tingling heat from his breath making her smile. "Sorry," he tries to say again, but his mouth is suddenly otherwise occupied.

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She breathes dust into her lungs, and coughs, trying to spit, but her mouth is too dry. "_Jesus,_" she wheezes, the spreading pain in her lungs dulling to a constant throb. The sun is hot, _too_ hot, if she's honest, and she squints at her surroundings, trying to find the make of where she is. She almost wants to laugh.

It figures that she'd land in a bloody desert, of all things. It was Russia, before, and then Buckingham Palace. Norway, once. Her body is sore in ways she is unsure how to categorize, and she stretches in interesting ways, trying to soothe her angry muscles. She takes another look around when she's finished, searching for something (anything) in the gold sand, the sunlight reflecting on the endless expanse in bright and irritating ways. She's happy, at the very least, that it isn't a beach. She _hates_ beaches; hates the thick tang of salt which sticks to the back of her throat, hates the white sand flooding carelessly with gray as the tide claims it. They make her nauseous.

She hears a shout in the distance, but all she can see is sand and sky, so she does the only thing she can: waits. In other times she would have run toward it, but she'd like the chance to see what she's facing before recklessly placing herself in the frying pan. It's certainly warm enough to feel that way already, but she doesn't want to push her luck. The shout is closer this time, and she pulls back her sleeve to check her watch. The second hand clicks sluggishly once, twice, before it stops completely.

After a few moments, she can see a silhouette of someone jogging toward her, and her heart clenches. Was it— ?

"Christ, I never thought I'd find someone all the bloody way out _here_," says a distinctly female voice. The woman is close enough that she's no longer a shadow in the distance, but is a human— a colorful, three-dimensional human with fire for hair. It's a few moments more until the woman is standing fully in front of her.

"Who are you, then?" says the redhead, nonplused. She doesn't seem to be bothered by the fact that they could be the only two people alive for miles in any direction.

"Rose," she says, and nods in a friendly way.

"Blimey, _you're_ Rose? Alright then, listen Blondie, you haven't exactly got the time to waste jumping all about space like a ruddy Mexican skipping bean. There's stuff to be done."

"Did you mean to say 'jumping' bean?"

"You're as bad as _him_!" she laughs. "It doesn't matter what I didn't say, but you do need to listen to this: you're close. You're ireally/i close, and one more of your jumps could rip this whole bloody universe apart, so you'd better calm down with your methods. You know you shouldn't be doing it anyway. But he wants you to know that when you get there, because apparently you're persistent if nothing else, that the first thing you need to do is find me." At this the woman points to her face with both hands and grins.

"Right," says Rose, "but who exactly are you?"

"Oh," the woman says uncertainly. "I'm Donna." She shoves her hand into the space between them, and Rose shakes it.

"Now," Donna continues, brushing her flaming hair back across her shoulders. "I know he thinks he knows everything, but he could learn a thing or two, let me tell you. That's why I'm sort of breaking the rules here. Right now you're only traveling through time and space, visiting places that are already on his timeline. Which is to say, just about _everywhere_. But you'll need some extra juice when it comes to divergent dimensions, so here." Donna slips her hand into her pocket, pulls out a green post-it with math equations written carefully on the surface. She hands it to Rose with a significant look.

"What's this?"

"The answer. You'll know what to do with it."

"Donna," she says, making it sound more like a question. "When will I get there? How will I know I've found the right universe?"

She only laughs. "Oh trust me, sunshine, you'll know. Now, _Eastenders_ is on in three minutes, and I really can't miss it. Nice to meet you, Blondie."

Donna's eyes spiral from green to gold, and then winks. Rose has enough time to wonder why she feels the way she does, before she blinks out of existence. Donna only brushes sand from the sleeve of her arm, turning to face the second sun. "Off we go," she says to no one, and then the planet is empty.

Until, of course, a bus crashes into the sand from nowhere at all.

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"Rooooooose," he calls, sounding forlorn. Her name echoes through the hallways, and she bookmarks her place in _The Biology of Transcendence_ before uncurling herself from the armchair and standing with a half-yawn. He's already in the door to the study, leaning against the frame with _the Look_. She knows what it means — airports and a new language, strange homemade devices, laughter. But mostly trouble.

She meets him at the door, fingers the round collar of shirt, reveling in the feel of cotton against his skin. "Yes, darling?" she says, pretending not to notice the way his breathing has started to change. He swallows, clears his throat.

"Rose, we have to—" he begins, but her hands have smoothed down his chest, gliding lower with every passing second, and his words have disappeared somewhere. He shudders slightly and she can't help but smile.

"We have to what, Doctor?" She sidles closer to him, lips finding the soft skin in the hollow of his neck.

"We um, we have to— ah, _Rose_," he says, but she kind of thinks it sounds more like a groan. "What's on the agenda today?" she hums into his skin. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, and she can see him trying to ignore her ministrations in order to tell her whatever it is that made him find her. He isn't used to being so overwhelmed by emotion, by _desire_, so she tries to take advantage of it as much as possible. Her hands slide under his shirt.

"Blue," he gasps, when her teeth graze his collarbone through the shirt. "Aliens, with— ships!"

"Mmm," she says. "Aliens with ships, huh?" Her fingers dance along band of his trousers.

"Trading with— ah! Cargo!"

She pulls him further into the study, his words becoming less and less coherent, her hands mapping more and more of his skin.

The next day, unsurprisingly, she is captured by blue aliens. The Doctor insults them, and she gets airlocked.

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The mysterious equation from the redheaded Donna is being passed from her hands to Mickey's. His eyebrow lifts, but he doesn't say anything.

Within the week, someone from Torchwood with a white coat and a genius IQ stops by her office, telling her all about physics, and alternate universes, and how many Bernards of power it would take to move across them. Before, she had just been tracking time disruptions using a re-engineered dimension hopper, crossing only space and time. All she would need, apparently, was electricity— a lot of it, he says with Welsh enthusiasm.

"But traveling through dimensions… Miss Tyler, it should be impossible."

"Nothing's impossible," she says.

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She wonders about Donna, sometimes, when the sun is bright or the electric feel of a storm hangs in the air. She knows how powerful Donna must be, thinks about how much more dangerous her life is now that she has the power of the stars in her head. But then she hears off-key singing coming from the kitchen, despite being outside and sprawled on a blanket to enjoy the summer heat, eyes shut against the sun. His voice fades in and out, but eventually the door creaks and then clacks shut.

She hears him sit down beside her after a few moments, and she opens one eye. He is grinning at her, holding up the lemonade he's just made for them, the ice clinking softly in the glass. She sits up and presses her lips against his before taking it from him. "Cheers," he says, and they cling the edges of their glasses together, the lemonade calmly sloshing.

It's too sour, but she kind of likes it better that way.


End file.
